Video: Republicans Block Blumenthal Amendment to Prevent National Security Funding from Being Used on Trump's Luxury Qatari Jet
[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) spoke on the Senate Floor today ahead of a vote on his amendment to the Republican budget that would prohibit the use of funds intended for national security to instead be used to accept, retrofit, or transfer a plane given by a foreign government for use as Air Force One during the Trump Administration. Every Republican senator voted against the amendment.
“Illegal, exorbitantly costly, dangerous to national defense; we should stand up to this corrupt self-dealing,” Blumenthal said on the Senate Floor.
Earlier this year, President Trump solicited and received a $200 million Boeing 747-8 jet as a gift from the government of Qatar to be retrofitted for use as Air Force One while in office, then transferred to his Presidential Library at the end of his term.
The plane will require massive modifications to serve as Air Force One. It must be stripped down to its parts to ensure there are no hidden listening devices and multiple top-secret systems need to be installed. That work will take years to complete and the estimated cost to American taxpayers is as high as $1.5 billion. Just this week, the Air Force Secretary testified that he was transferring money intended for modernization of our nuclear arsenal to pay to retrofit Trump’s luxury plane.
The transcript of Blumenthal’s remarks is available below and the video is available here.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I make this motion to commit the reconciliation bill to the Armed Services Committee on behalf of myself and Senator Schumer because President Trump earlier this year solicited and accepted a $200 million gift from the government of Qatar—a Boeing 747 jet to be retrofitted supposedly for use as Air Force One.
Make no mistake, this transfer is illegal. It’s a blatant violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which prohibits exactly this kind of foreign gift risking undue foreign influence. It is also abhorrently wasteful—costing taxpayers [as much as] $1.5 billion to strip it down and then install all the necessary security systems. And it won’t even be ready before the end of Trump’s term.
And now we learn from the Air Force Secretary just last week that the money will be transferred from modernization of our nuclear arsenal, the Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile program. It’s a sacrifice of our national security.
This motion—which I’ve worked on with Senators Schumer and Schatz—would send the bill back to the Armed Services Committee with instruction to add a prohibition on using funds for this un-Constitutional wasteful self-enrichment.
I yield the floor.
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